Our van was in the shop a few weeks before we needed it for this trip. It freaked out on Sharma and overheated, A/C stopped working, the check engine light came on and had several leaks. I dropped it off at our mechanic. I normally just drop the car off in his parking lot, drop the keys in a box and leave a note on the seat saying what is wrong with it. I usually receive a phone call within a few days with what is wrong and how much it will cost. This time there was no call. I called him a week later and he said that he was on vacation and now is very busy. I said just let me know when you look at it. 'No problem' he said, he'll look at it tomorrow and let me know. Another week passed, nothing. Called him again. This time he had bad news, it was going to cost a lot of money to repair it...more money that it was worth. I decided right then and there to junk it. It was time, it has been a great vehicle, but it is 14 years old and has 190,000 miles on it. It is only a matter of time before something major goes wrong with it. It is time to cut our loses.
So this brings me to our current vacation. No van to drive to Prague, we decided to rent a vehicle. We got a mid-sized car that ran well and had A/C, what more could you want. The drawback to this is that we can't take advantage of the discounted gas that we are entitled to as part of our military agreement with Germany.
Our pet sitter was also booked this time around, being Memorial weekend, so we had to take Eddie as part of our trip. I love Eddie, but sometimes he can be a bit of a handful when he is out. He gets a bit anxious...wait, a lot anxious and can attract attention. The thought of going through this gave me anxiety, so here we are, two anxious people trying to go on vacation to have a good time.
We loaded up the car and started off for Prague. It took us a little longer than we anticipated to get there...seems like this is always the case. We had great travels until we got to Prague. We were racing against time, because our hotel confirmation stated that the front desk closed at midnight. We got into Prague with about 10 minutes to spare but had no idea that we had to drive all the way through Prague to get to our hotel. It took forever to get to our hotel, and then to make matters worse, we could see our hotel but couldn't get to it. We had to call our hotel twice to make sure they knew we were coming so they would close the doors on us. We drove up this deserted road trying to find the hotel, realizing it was a deadend we turned around. We spotted a couple of police officers standing, smoking and talking. I pulled up and asked for directions. They didn't know either but gave us their best guess. With a bit of luck we finally found our place. Time to go to bed.
The next day we ate a continental breakfast at the hotel and left around 9am. We had to walk about 15 minutes to our metro stop, under a couple of overpasses that could be intimidating, especially if it was nightime. We found the metro to be easy to use and convenient to where we wanted to go.
Our first stop was the area near the Powder gate. As we were approaching it, we noticed several advertisements for concerts, operas, ballets etc for that evening. We had our choice of twenty different places to watch a show, but we had Eddie, there would be no culture on this trip. We wandered down several streets without a real destination or purpose. We could see this amazing edifice in front of us, but it was surrounded by buildings and we didn't know how to get there. We wandered down a couple of streets...passed a TGIFridays...that wasn't what we were looking for, too American. We finally made our way to the area that contained the church and then realized it was still surrounded by buildings. The church we were after was called 'The church of our lady Tyn'. It is a monstrous church with multiple spires, very beautiful. We were standing around near this area, trying to get our bearings straight and figure out where to go next, we noticed a group of people taking a picture of this thing'. It looked like a hooded figure, but it was a statue. It had a plaque on it, but it was in Czech so we couldn't read it. Come to find out the place was called Estates Theatre, and it was the first place that Mozart's Don Giovanni was ever performed. We took a picture outside and then strolled into the lobby, asked if we could go inside and take a picture, were denied and then left. There were several groups of Americans in tour groups, we stood and listened for a while but realized we did'nt like that style of tourism and kept on moving. We worked our way to several other churches and happened upon a wedding that had just taken place. They were taking pictures outside of the church in front of this classically restored automobile. We stopped and took a picutre ourself, little did they know they had just become part of Sharma's roll of pictures. In this same area there is something called an astronomical clock, a very neat clock that displays the relative position of the sun, moon and zodiac constellations.
Next we walked to the old Jewish settlement admiring the synagogue, the old cemetery and other buildings...what we failed to realize is that it was Saturday...their sabath. Everything was closed, we would have to return tomorrow. We continued on to the Charles Bridge. A wondrous bridge, that spans the Vltava river, unique with its pairings of statues the whole length. It was very crowded with sightseers with vendors selling their goods. As we were approaching the end of the bridge I noticed these photographs of different Beatles lyrics painted on this graffiti ladened wall. I took note, but did not buy. Then a few vendors later I noticed more pictures, and the next vendor had more. By this time I was intrigued so I stopped and browsed through them. I selected one, Hailey and McKay each got one as well. As we were leaving I asked the vendor where these pictures were taken, expecting the obvious "London" as a response. I was surprised to find out we were about two blocks from it...that suddently became my mecca, I had to find it. It was a nice stretch of wall, a block long with all sorts of Beatles lyrics, inspirational sayings and tributes to John Lennon. It was the highlight of our trip. Everybody in the family took turns defacing the wall with our own Beatles lyric. It was well attended and everybody had a good time. We stumbled upon a street bazaar, full of souvenir shops and tourist kiosks. We spent quite a long time shopping...correction, Sharma spent quite a long time shopping. It is okay though, we knocked out most of our souvenir shopping at this stop. Our next destination was the Prague castle. A huge (according to the Guinness Book of world records, the largest castle in the world) castle set on top of a mighty hill. Yes, we climbed up to it. It is within a walled area that contains a church and other buildings. The best part was the view that it afforded us once we got to the top. We looked out over Prague on a beautiful evening and just took in the sites. One of those quiet times to reflect on the unique situation that we find ourselves in, being in Europe. We walked back down from the castle and caught a metro home. We were tired and it was late, our beds sounded good.
The next day we grabbed breakfast at the hotel again and caught the metro. First we stopped at the Jewish Quarter since it was open. We bought tickets to take the tour of the Old Jewish quarter and decided we should hide Eddie so that he could go along. We dropped him into Hailey's bag and stood in line. The next thing I knew we had been spotted and told that we couldn't take him in. I opted to stay outside while everybody else went in. When Sharma got to the ticket booth, she explained the situation and described how big Eddie was, she got special permission for Eddie to accompany us, as long as he stayed in the bag. No problem. We enjoyed the buildings and especially the cemetery. It contained the gravestone of Rabbi Loew, who is associated with the lengend of Golem...look it up. All of the kids took etchings of Rabbi Loew's headstone. Very cool. We went to St Wenceslas square and walked toward the National museum. It was a nice walk and we passed a lady selling pizza, we bought a slice each and a drink and enjoyed it as we sat in the middle of the square watching the cars zip by. From the National museum we walked down to a museum dedicated to Antonin Dvorak, Sharma's favorite composer. This was her highlight. We almost had tragedy strike...we got there and realized it was closed. We tried to read the sign and realized we had missed it by 10 minutes. RATS! So we decided to walk around and look in the windows, then Hailey noticed that they were just closed for lunch, not for the day. Awesome!! We waited in the shade and then the time came. We paid the small fee and I just sat back and watched as Sharma and Hailey were enthralled with everything. It had his viola, piano, pen, music sheets, family pictures, graduation robe. It even had a desk that Beethoven owned. It was very neat, and Sharma was happy, that is all that mattered at that point in time. We walked to the National Theatre and walked out on to the bridge next to it. There were several paddle boats in the water, many people taking in the day on the river. We stood on the bridge and watched them. We walked down to McDonalds to grab a quick bite to eat and then headed back to the hotel.
We caught a nice night's sleep and the woke up and grabbed one last breakfast before leaving. On our way out of town, we stopped at an IKEA for Sharma. If any of you know her, this is her passion, so she loves to collect catalogs...but not just any catalog, European IKEA catalogs. We stopped, but it was closed except for those that were having breakfast there. Sharma went in and convinced the lady to lend her a catalog...little did the lady know that that would be the last time she would see it. Now announcing, in our IKEA catalog collection, we officially have a Czech IKEA catalog...I know how excited everybody is. Since you can't make it over here to see it, I am sure if you ask Sharma, she will take a picture of it and send it to you. We decided to drive to Dachau and see the concentration camp. Too make a long story short, we drove 4 hours just to find out that the site was closed on Mondays. I felt so bad, I should have looked up the hours/day of operation. The drive home was especially long from that point on. Info Transportation to city: Drove van Transportation in city: Metro Lodging: Wellness Hotel Step Sites:
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